Gone are any pretences about saving the Iranian people. “They really are a nation of terror and hate,” Donald Trump says of Iran. Asked if he would like to help its people, he replied: “I’d like to, if they can behave, but they’ve been very menacing.” Perhaps even he sensed the counterproductive ugliness of this, hastily adding that they are “great people … smart, brilliant, energetic”.

It gets worse. Trump wrote on Truth Social that Iran had “plans of taking over the entire Middle East” and “completely obliterating Israel,” adding: “JUST LIKE IRAN ITSELF, THOSE PLANS ARE NOW DEAD!” Pronouncing the death of a nation hardly screams liberation.

Nor are these isolated flourishes. If Iran continues to block the strait of Hormuz, Trump threatens, the US will “take out easily destroyable targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again”. Then, with apocalyptic relish: “Death, Fire, and Fury will reign upon them.”

While such language is meant to project strength, it portrays something else entirely. These are the morbid symptoms of a collapsing hegemony. Previous US presidents understood that domination required moral cover. Forty-five years ago, Ronald Reagan cast the US as “the exemplar of freedom and a beacon of hope for those who do not now have freedom”. Two decades later, George W Bush spoke of democracy as “the inborn hope of our humanity, an ideal we carry........

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